🔒Connie Weaver shapes messages that strengthen brands

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Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer TIAA

Many business women have confronted offensive male managers. They have balanced full-time work schedules with full-time parenting and spent years at firms that paid them less than they deserved and offered few opportunities for advancement.

Connie Weaver is not one of them.

Weaver, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of TIAA (Teachers Insurance and Annuity of America), a retirement-services provider for individuals in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields, grew up in southern New Jersey, in a family of small business owners, who infused her with commerce know-how from a young age. Her father manufactured stockings and pantyhose. Her mother simultaneously operated a clothing store and a restaurant, and her grandmother ran a construction company. Weaver worked for all of them from the age of 13.

“When you grow up with that kind of exposure, you don't know that there are barriers because there aren't — and if you let something be a barrier, it will become debilitating,” she says.

Weaver recently completed a four-year rebranding of her company, formerly known as TIAA-CREF, that attempts to demystify the financial planning process with a simplified marketing campaign, a shortened name, a new logo and a redesigned website. She ranks it as one of the greatest accomplishments of her career.

“When you're serving brilliant people, like professors, it doesn't make them feel very good when they read something and can't understand it,” she said.

Weaver officially entered the workforce in 1975, after graduating from the University of Maryland with a degree in textile chemistry and business, as one of the very first female field representatives for the Martin Marietta Aluminum Co.

“Everybody wanted to meet the woman who sells aluminum,” she said. “People would look at you and say 'My granddaughter is about your age' and you'd sit there and have to prove yourself.”

She moved into the publishing industry within a year, first as a sales representative for Prentice-Hall Inc., where she got her first taste of marketing; then as marketing coordinator and sales manager at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; and, finally, in several top marketing roles with McGraw Hill Inc., where she remained until 1990.

From there, Weaver shifted to the telecommunications industry. Over a 12-year span, she handled investor relations and financial communications at MCI Communications in Washington, D.C.; Microsoft Corp. in Seattle; and AT&T in Basking Ridge, N.J. In 2002, AT&T elevated her to executive vice president for public relations and marketing and tapped her to spearhead a brand transformation, similar to the one she just completed for TIAA. In 2005, Weaver moved on to the BearingPoint communications consulting firm as executive vice president and chief marketing officer. She remained there until 2008, when she accepted a position as senior vice president and chief marketing officer for The Hartford and moved to Connecticut. Within two years, a recruiter persuaded her to join TIAA-CREF.

“It's fascinating to move through different industries and recognize that people in business have so many similarities, whether you're in aluminum or energy or publishing or consulting or insurance,” she said. “You learn to use the skills that you've acquired doing other things and apply them to a new situation.”

Weaver adds that she has been blessed with a husband, David, who understood that her personal life has always been defined by the energy that she applies to business — “It's the way we were brought up” — and who, as an author and consultant, could work wherever her career happened to take them, “so long as he had access to a telephone and a computer.”

Interestingly, the couple was so invested in the Greater Hartford community, when she began working at TIAA-CREF, they opted to stay here rather than move near the company headquarters in New York City. Weaver presently sits on the boards of Hartford Hospital, The University of St. Joseph, the University of Connecticut Foundation and the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, where, as chair of the marketing committee, she spearheaded a project to redefine The Bushnell with a new logo and visual identity, a new website and a stronger social-media presence.

“I never saw the glass ceiling the way others do,” Weaver says. “If you couple that with an optimism — somebody who continually wants to learn new things and make an impact, that's who I am.”n

What are your keys to …

Maintaining business success:

My actions are always driven by the customer, and to serve the customer to the fullest, you need to understand their motivations and their goals at an emotional level.

Maintaining work-life balance:

I grew up in a family business, so my professional and personal lives were merged from an early age. I don't see work and life as either/or — I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction and purpose from both. My trick to keeping my personal relationships healthy during demanding professional times is through energy — I commit to giving an evening with my family the same level of energy I'd give to a meeting with the board of directors.

Who was an influential mentor in your professional life? Why?

I had the good fortune of meeting Harold “Terry” McGraw III, chairman emeritus of McGraw Hill, early in my career. He was more than a mentor. Terry was a true sponsor, giving me new opportunities, taking chances, and pushing me to develop new skills, including putting me onto assignments that were important to him and where he thought I might shine, even if they weren't intuitive to me at first. Great sponsors like Terry are invaluable—in my case, it led me to a career of taking chances with confidence.

Read about the other outstanding 2016 Women in Business.